WILLIAM HAZLITT

1778-1830

ON NICKNAMES

Hae nugae in seria ducunt.

THIS is a more important subject than it seems at first sight. It is as serious in its results as it is contemptible in the means by which these results are brought about. Nicknames, for the most part, govern the world. The history of politics, of religion, of literature, of morals, and of private life, is too often little less than the history of nicknames. What are one-half the convulsions of the civilized world-the frequent overthrow of states and kingdoms-the shock and hostile encounters of mighty continents-the battles by sea and land-the intestine commotions-the feuds of the Vitelli and Orsini, of the Guelphs and Ghibellines the civil wars in England and the League in France-the jealousies and heart-burnings of cabinets and councils-the uncharitable proscriptions of creeds and sects, Turk, Jew, Pagan, Papist and Puritan, Quaker, and Methodist-the persecutions and massacres-the burnings, tortures, imprisonments, and lingering deaths, inflicted for a different profession of faith-but so many illustrations of the power of this principle? Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and Neale's History of the Puritans, are comments on the same text. The fires in Smithfield were fanned by nicknames, and a nickname set its seal on the unopened dungeons of the

Holy Inquisition. Nicknames are the talismans and spells that collect and set in motion all the combustible part of men's passions and prejudices, which have hitherto played so much more successful a game, and done their work so much more effectually than reason, in all the grand concerns and petty details of human life, and do not yet seem tired of the task assigned them. Nicknames are the convenient, portable tools by which they simplify the process of mischief, and get through their job with the least time and trouble. These worthless, unmeaning, irritating, envenomed words of reproach are the established signs by which the different compartments of society are ticketed, labelled, and marked out for each other's hatred and contempt. They are to be had, ready cut and dry, of all sorts and sizes, wholesale and retail, for foreign exportation or for home consumption, and for all occasions in life. "The priest calls the lawyer a cheat, the lawyer beknaves the divine.' The Frenchman hates the Englishman because he is an Englishman; and the Englishman hates the Frenchman for as good a reason. The Whig hates the Tory, and the Tory the Whig. The Dissenter hates the Church of England man, and the Church of England man hates the Dissenter, as if they were of a different species, because they have a different designation. The Mussulman calls the worshipper of the Cross Christian dog', spits in his face, and kicks him from the pavement, by virtue of a nickname; and the Christian retorts the indignity upon the Infidel and the Jew by the same infallible rule of right. In France they damn Shakespeare in the lump, by calling him a barbare; and we talk of Racine's verbiage with inexpressible

contempt and self-complacency. Among ourselves, an anti-Jacobin critic denounces a Jacobin poet and his friends, at a venture, 'as infidels and fugitives, who have left their wives destitute, and their children fatherless '—whether they have wives and children or not. The unenlightened savage makes a meal of his enemy's flesh, after reproaching him with the name of his tribe, because he is differently tattooed; and the literary cannibal cuts up the character of his opponent by the help of a nickname. The jest of all this is, that a party nickname is always a relative term, and has its countersign, which has just the same force and meaning, so that both must be perfectly ridiculous and insignificant. A Whig implies a Tory; there must be Malcontents' as well as 'Malignants'; Jacobins and anti-Jacobins; English and French. These sorts of noms-de-guerre derive all their force from their contraries. Take away the meaning of the one, and you take the sting out of the other. They could not exist but upon the strength of mutual and irreconcilable antipathies; there must be no love lost between them. What is there in the names themselves to give them a preference over each other? Sound them, they do become the mouth as well; weigh them, they are as heavy; conjure with them, one will raise a spirit as soon as the other.' If there were not fools and madmen who hated both, there could not be fools and madmen bigoted to either. I have heard an eminent character boast that he had done more to produce the late war by nicknaming Buonaparte the Corsican', than all the state papers and documents on the subject put together. And yet Mr. Southey asks triumphantly, 'Is it to be sup

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posed that it is England, our England, to whom that war was owing?' As if, in a dispute between two countries, the conclusive argument, which lies in the pronoun our, belonged only to one of them. I like Shakespeare's version of the matter better :

Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night, Are they not but in Britain? I' the world's volume Our Britain seems as of it, but not in 't;

In a great pool a swan's nest, prithee, think

There's livers out of Britain.

In all national disputes, it is common to appeal to the numbers on your side as decisive on the point. If everybody in England thought the late war right, everybody in France thought it wrong. There were ten millions on one side of the question (or rather of the water), and thirty millions on the other side-that's all. I remember some one arguing, in justification of our Ministers interfering without occasion, That governments would not go to war for nothing'; to which I answered : Then they could not go to war at all; for, at that rate, neither of them could be in the wrong, and yet both of them must be in the right, which was absurd.' The only meaning of these vulgar nicknames and party distinctions, where they are urged most violently and confidently, is that others differ from you in some particular or other (whether it be opinion, dress, clime, or complexion), which you highly disapprove of, forgetting that, by the same rule, they have the very same right to be offended at you because you differ from them. Those who have reason on their side do not make the most obstinate and grievous appeals to prejudice and abusive language. I know but of one exception to this general rule, and that is where

the things that excite disgust are of such a kind that they cannot well be gone into without offence to decency and good manners; but it is equally certain in this case, that those who are most shocked at the things are not those who are most forward to apply the names. A person will not be fond of repeating a charge, or adverting to a subject, that inflicts a wound on his own feelings, even for the sake of wounding the feelings of another. A man should be very sure that he himself is not what he has always in his mouth. The greatest prudes have been often accounted the greatest hypocrites, and a satirist is at best but a suspicious character. The loudest and most unblushing invectives against vice and debauchery will as often proceed from a desire to inflame and pamper the passions of the writer, by raking into a nauseous subject, as from a wish to excite virtuous indignation against it in the public mind, or to reform the individual. To familiarize the mind gross ideas is not the way to increase your own or the general repugnance to them. But to return to the subject of nicknames.

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The use of this figure of speech is, that it excites a strong idea without requiring any proof. It is a shorthand, compendious mode of getting at a conclusion, and never troubling yourself or anybody else with the formalities of reasoning or the dictates of common sense. It is superior to all evidence, for it does not rest upon any, and operates with the greatest force and certainty in proportion to the utter want of probability. Belief is only a stray impression, and the malignity or extravagance of the accusation passes for a proof of the crime. Brevity is the soul of wit'; and